


Finding the Maker

by miladydewinter



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Camp, F/F, Fluff, Hair Braiding, Kisses, Story-Telling, like so much fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 10:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15970550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miladydewinter/pseuds/miladydewinter
Summary: Leliana braids Neria Surana's hair before they settle down for the night, and tells her a story about her favourite elven hero.





	Finding the Maker

We sit in the corner of the camp, away from the fire where Oghren and Zevran compete at trying to make Alistair blush. Sten lies nearby with my dog, Rascal. He’s pretending that he isn’t paying attention to their conversation, but every so often the corners of his thin lips quirk upwards in the slightest of smiles.

“We have good friends,” Leliana remarks. I turn my head to look at her, and a firm hand reaches out to grab me by the chin, gently forcing me to look straight ahead, as before. Leliana pulls away and continues to work the knots out of my hair with her fingers. As much as I’d ordinarily miss the skin-to-skin contact, no matter how innocent, the sensation of having my hair played with is such pure bliss that I forget to be upset.

“I’ve never had this many friends before,” I say after a moment of pause. It had always just been me and Jowan in the Tower. We came as a pair. Neria and Jowan; you only ever got both. Maker, how I miss him.

She must catch something off in the way I speak or the way I sit, because I feel Leliana place a soft, chaste kiss to the top of my head. _I am here_ , she seems to say. “How would you feel if I was to braid your hair?” are the words that exit her mouth instead.

No-one has offered to braid my hair in years. I can barely remember the last time; I think my father used to style my hair when I was a little girl, before the templars came to take me from the alienage. “I would love that,” I reply softly.

She squeals behind me, the tiniest, most girlish noise I have heard since before this whole business with the Blight began. “It’s going to be so cute and wavy when you wake up in the morning!” she says excitedly, and for a moment it’s easy to forget that we’re on the brink of a civil war. There is only Leliana, and her joy, and her light.

I wait for her to split my hair into two halves, only dimly aware that I’m allowing my head to lean into her touch just slightly. “Leliana,” I say. “Can you tell me a story?”

“Of course, ma chérie. What kind of story would you like to hear?”

I chew my lip as I consider my options. “Do you know any about elves?” I ask. Truthfully, I don't expect her to. Learning about my elven brethren was one of the things I’d been most excited about when Duncan rescued me from the Circle, but I quickly learned that the outside world is not as rosy as I had hoped. Humans probably don’t sing songs or tell stories about elven heroes.

But my lovely bard catches me by surprise for the hundredth time, and I swear I can hear the smile in her voice as she says, “I know many. You will have to be more specific.”

Another discovery I have made since leaving the Circle is that I am terrible at making small, inconsequential decisions. Big ones are easy; help people in need, don’t kill possessed children, avoid blood magic. But little ones, like how much soup I want to eat, or which bedroll I want to sleep on… No-one ever taught me how to make choices like those. They were always made for me in the Circle. “You pick,” I tell Leliana. “What’s your favourite?”

“My favourite?” Her fingers begin to braid my hair as she considers my question, and I release a contented sigh. “Alright,” she says after a moment or two. “Once, there was an elf, and she was beautiful; long brown hair, and warm brown eyes to match.”

“Leliana,” I draw out warningly. I can already see where this is going.

She ignores me. “Now, when this elf was just a child, she was taken by templars to live in the Circle of Magi, for she had magic. And while she was there, she had many adventures, and she made a friend.”

I can’t help but find her take on events so far endearing. Although I wouldn’t call any of what I went through at Kinloch an adventure, I suppose even the simplest of tasks could be considered one with the right mindset.

“Over time, the children grew up. And our heroine, as well as being beautiful, was also incredibly kind. So when her friend enlisted her help in running away, she was happy to assist.”

“He was also in love,” I supply.

“A romance? Ooh, I’ll add that in!” I hear a slight rustling behind me as Leliana reaches for a strip of fabric to tie off the first of my two braids with. “Our heroine’s best friend was in love,” she continues, “and it was only after she’d helped him escape that she discovered his dark secret. He was a blood mage.” She paused for a moment. “What became of your friend’s lover?”

“She refused to have anything to do with him.”

“Poor thing.” Fingers run through the length of the unbraided part of my hair before carefully splitting it into three separate sections. “The Circle would typically punish anybody who helped a blood mage escape, but Andraste had mercy upon our heroine for, that day, a Grey Warden was visiting the Tower in search of recruits. Her loyalty to her friend and her unwavering courage captured this man’s attention.

“He took her to Ostagar, where the King was planning an enormous battle against an army of darkspawn. But sadly, the battle was lost when the King’s most trusted adviser betrayed him, and of all the Grey Wardens in Ferelden, only two remained: Alistair Theirin, and our heroine.”

“What?” Alistar yells from across the camp, his head snapping round to face us. “I heard my name!”

“It’s nothing, Alistair!” I shout back. “Just one of Leliana’s stories!”

“Oh. Okay!” He smiles brightly at us before returning to his conversation with Zevran and Oghren. I smile, too. Of all the Wardens I could’ve been left with, I’m glad that it was him.

“Maker, but he’s so sweet!” Leliana coos, and I laugh. “Where were we? Oh yes.” She adopts her story-telling voice, the one she only uses for that task alone. It’s calmer than her usual tone, I think. And clearer, and more demanding. “Our heroine and her companion were saved from the darkspawn horde by the Witch of the Korcari Wilds, who gifted them with the aid of her beloved daughter.”

“How do you know about that?” I ask. Morrigan’s status as an apostate is one we’ve been trying to keep under wraps lest she be taken from us.

“Morrigan told me,” she replies simply. “She also told me that she half expects to return only to find that her house has burned down where her mother has forgotten to put out the stove.”

“She seemed concerned about that as we left,” I recall. “In her own way.”

“Are we not all concerned in our own ways?” she asks. Her fingers begin to fasten off the end of my second braid with another strip of fabric.

“Keep going with the story,” I say. “I’d like to know how it ends.”

“Wouldn’t we all?” My braids are moved to sit against the front of my shoulders, and I feel Leliana begin to trace patterns idly into the fabric over my back a moment later. “The Witch’s daughter suggested that they stop off for supplies in a nearby village called Lothering. And it was there that they befriended Sten, a disgraced Qunari soldier who could not return home until he had retrieved his lost sword.”

“I’m not sure that he would call us ‘friends’,” I say.

Leliana runs a finger down my spine, and I shiver instinctively. “He would.”

“As I recall,” I say, shifting away from her and turning around to meet her beautiful blue eyes, “our heroes met someone else in Lothering, too?”

“Oh?” she raises an eyebrow, a teasing smirk playing on her lips. “And who might that have been?”

“The heroine was saved from a group of enemy soldiers by a Chantry sister.” I do not have Leliana’s gift with words, but I long for it now. How am I supposed to explain all my feelings in mere words alone? “She had the prettiest hair, and the sweetest voice, and she said that the Maker had brought them together.”

She reaches out a hand to cup my cheek, oh so gently. “And did our heroine believe her?” she asks as she leans in, stopping just short of my lips.

“She didn’t know what to believe,” I confess. “Between her Harrowing and Jowan and Ostagar and the Blight, it was hard for her to believe that there was a Maker at all. And then she looked into the Chantry sister’s eyes and thought… Something so beautiful cannot have come to exist purely by coincidence. This woman cannot be here, with me, by coincidence.”

She leaned in to kiss me, soft and sweet and lingering. “I am pleased that I could help you find the Maker,” she teases gently. “It is, after all, my job as a Chantry sister to spread the Chant far and wide.”

“I never said I’d found him,” I replied, daring to flirt. I did this with Leliana; I dared, I made choices. “I think I might need a little more guidance.”

She laughed, light and sweet as the rest of her, and I leaned in to meet her halfway this time. This kiss was a little rougher than the first, and far more passionate. Her hands cupped my face delicately, and my own fingers twisted in the fabric of her tunic. “Would you like to continue… _searching_ , somewhere more private,” she suggests breathlessly.

I give her a tiny little kiss on the tip of her nose. “I would love to.”


End file.
